


all their words for glory

by kitschvanitas



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Ignoring Canon in Favor of Feelings (TM), M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-04-28 22:08:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14458821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitschvanitas/pseuds/kitschvanitas
Summary: Steve Rogers didn't wear his own tags.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to QueerImagination for letting me hurt her feelings with this first. <3
> 
> title is from "Glory" by Bastille, one of my go to bands for writing very sad things.

“Sergeant Barnes fell in the middle of hostile territory. This is all we were able to recover."

Here is another sound to play over and over again in Steve's head, with the howl of the winter wind and the scream of metal breaking-- the faintly musical sound of Commander Phillips sliding those tags across the table.

"I'm sorry, Captain. I'll send them with the letter."

Steve thinks of the fourth floor window over the fire escape, the one that looks out over 24th St. Thinks of the blue star in that window turning gold. Thinks of Rebecca changing the banner herself.

"Commander, I... I'll take them the tags. Next time I'm stateside." Phillips raises one bushy eyebrow, like he's considering arguing with Steve. Then he just shakes head, sighing heavily.

"I'll defer to your judgement here, Captain. Zola should be ready to talk."

"I want to talk to him."

Phillips holds up his hand. "You're not going to."

"But--"

"I'm not hearing it. You're in no shape to that Swiss gerbil. You need to rest. Debrief with Agent Carter and rest."

Steve means to argue anyway-- he really does. But then he looks at those tags, the ones he somehow, impossibly, will never hear rattling around Bucky's neck again as he sneaks out in the dead of night to grab a smoke, will never see all askew while Bucky tells a story, and he-- he has no fight left in him. Not today. He just swipes the tags from the table, holding them tight in his fist. It feels like a theft.

The rest of the Commandos are back at their tents. He can't face them. He can't face any of them. Not now.

* * *

 

The pub where they first came together, as a unit. After Azzano. He remembers the way like he remembers the way between his building and Bucky's. Like he remembers most things now.

It's gone. Like so much of the London he remembers.

He sits there in the wreckage anyway, the tags held tight in his fist. Peggy will be coming to find him any minute. He knows that. He never came to debrief. And he doesn't want to explain. He doesn't want to explain why he's holding Bucky's dog tags. He slides them around his neck instead, where his own are meant to go.

* * *

 

He crashes with them around his neck weeks later. The last thing he remembers is the metal freezing on his skin. He wonders if Bucky felt the same thing.

* * *

 

He went under the ice with them on, but he wakes up without them. He wakes up without his shield, his helmet... the tags. Without any of the things that held him to the earth. Instead, he has shiny, perfect tags, ones that have never known mud or rain or shrapnel. They're perfect replicas, but they're _wrong_. He rips them off his neck the moment Fury has him back in the compound.

* * *

 

Agent Romanov is the first person he asks. It's after another brutal sparring session, where she's climbed on top of his shoulders and wrestled him to the mat. She's small, but her fighting style can be as brutal as Peggy's.

They're both soaked in sweat, letting their hearts and breathing calm down.

"The tags I had when I crashed. Where are they?"

"Your original tags? In the Smithsonian, I think. They're planning a whole special exhibit on you, now that you're defrosted."

His stomach twists. He never wanted that. "No. Not those. I wasn't wearing those."

"Oh. Your friend's tags."

"... yes.”

She shrugs, taking another long swig of her water. "Don't know. They took your shield and most of the gear you had on you to the tech labs. Anything they couldn't use, they probably archived."

He nods slowly. That's probably where everything is. Their archives.

"I'll ask, Rogers. Hit the showers."

He clears his throat awkwardly, not looking up from the mat. "Thank you, Agent Romanov."

She waves dismissively, without even turning around. "Don't mention it."

* * *

 

Months later, on July 3rd, she throws a little paper bag from her favorite deli on his desk.  It lands too heavily to be one of the Danishes she throws at him sometimes, when she’s in a particularly generous mood. "Romanov, what is this?"

"Open it later." But he's already tilted the contents into his hands. The metal is cool in his palm as he traces his fingertips over the numbers and letters he knows so well.

_James B. Barnes. 32557038 T42 43 0_

He can't speak for a moment. Just rubs his thumb over the tiny indents, the slight bend where someone had stepped on them. "I... thank you, Romanov."

"Don't mention it."

"This... this means a lot to me." She smiles and ducks out of the room. A moment later, the phone he never checks goes off.

_seriously, don't mention it. may or may not have stolen it out of the highest clearance archive. don't let coulson or fury catch you with it on._  

He smiles and clumsily taps out a reply.

_Thank you_

He's careful about making sure the tags are hidden under his shirt. It feels right to have them against his skin again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOY HOWDY THAT SURE WAS A FILM THAT WE ALL WATCHED, HUH
> 
> anyway, this fic will probably not ever, at any point, be infinity wars compliant, and only civil war compliant when i want it to be. let the healing begin here. with more angst.

The asset goes in search of the man on the bridge. The man who knew him.

The hospital he was taken to is easy enough to find, but it's too well guarded. The woman ( _ the widow _ , some disjointed fragment of procedural memory supplies) and the man with the wings trade watches at his room. The asset is still in pain, still weakened, and he has no urge to tangle with either of them again.

Instead, he does his best to clean up in a public bathroom, steals another change of clothes and a backpack. Thefts like these are a survival skill. It feels older than the skills he has had burned into him as the asset, for no reason he has the language to articulate.

He finds himself in the great white building at the end of the mall, blending into the crowds flowing in the doors. He's startled to see the man on the bridge staring bravely at them from a banner near the ceiling. He knows that it's only a picture, but he tugs his baseball cap over his eyes anyway. He can't meet his eyes.

All the same, he shuffles through the doors of the exhibit.

The air in here weighs too heavy. It would even without the crush of people. He takes in the information without really processing it, filing it all away for possible further examination and use. That filing becomes that much harder the further he gets.  He doesn't remember when exactly he sees a dead man's face that too closely resembles his own.

But it-- it's too much.

He stares at the grainy, blown up image of James Buchanan Barnes, unable to move for a moment. The asset doesn't have a history. He does not think he can carry one as heavy as this. They didn't build him for this. He tears himself away, searching for an exit, any exit.

There's a service door, one with an easy enough lock to break. It takes him to a flat, empty gray hallway, and he can start to breathe again.  He doesn't remember having to remind himself to breathe before. Someone else, maybe. But that fragment of memory dissolves into nothing before it can truly settle.

He finds himself in some kind of archive-- stacks and stacks of drawers and boxes and long tables. The labels are written in codes and abbreviations he has no way of understanding, but he's drawn to a set of items scattered across one of the tables, like someone had been working with them recently.

There's some scraps of worn fabric, a few sets of ancient paperwork, a yellowed paperback book with the front cover ripped off, a mismatched pair of shoes, and a photograph.

He leans forward and picks up the picture, handling it carefully by the edges.

There are two little boys in murky sepia tones, smiling up at the camera. The one with messy dark hair has his arm hooked around the smaller blonde boy's shoulder, mouth open like he's about to say something. 

The asset turns the photo over. There’s a caption written in careful handwriting on the back, slightly blurred and faded by time.

_ James & Steven, July 1925. _

Something floats up to the surface, a fragment bright and painful as an unexpected camera flash.

_ "Smile, boys!" _

_ "I can't smile and be still!" _

_ "Try for me?" _

_ "Ma!" _

_ "One, two, three... smile!" _

He blinks slowly, the picture coming back into focus again.

He tucks the photo into the notebook he found in the stolen backpack. It doesn't belong to him, he doesn't need it to survive, but he can't leave it here. Something won’t let him. 

He stares at it every chance he gets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someday i'll get to the comfort part of "hurt/comfort," i swear.
> 
> recommended listening for this bit: "Oblivion" by Bastille. it doesn't match, but it's real sad!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do you ever just lay awake at night and think about what the MCU would be like if literally any given character went and got some dang therapy

“You need to do something about Rogers.”

Peggy looks up from the garbled files she’s been trying to decode for the past three hours, sighing almost too faintly to be heard in the chaotic noise of headquarters. It doesn’t get past Colonel Phillips. He stands there in front of her, arms crossed over his chest, craggy brows knitted into the kind of anger that is the closest the man can come to sympathy. “I can’t fix this, Colonel,” she says, turning her attention back to the coded messages. “He lost his best friend, and we weren’t able to even give him a body to bury.”

She had tried. She’d gone to him in the bombed out wreck of that bar, tried to find the right words to say. She’s laid awake for days, thinking of Steve Rogers, stinking of whiskey but still clear-eyed.

“I’m not asking you to fix it. I’m asking you to get him ready to go back into the field. Zola gave us good information, and we need to move in the next few days.”

She looks up from her work again, mouth hanging open for a moment before she catches herself. She stands up, stepping into his space in a way that she learned to stop fearing long ago. “You can’t be serious.”

He stands there, unmoved as ever, his face set in stone. She continues, holding up a finger in his face, and when she’s angry like this she feels taller than he is, taller than any of them. “You can’t do this, he just-- he needs time to  _ mourn _ \--”

“Mourning is a luxury for peacetime, Agent Carter. We can’t afford it.”

The truth of his words hangs too heavy in the air, and Peggy almost staggers under the weight of it. “Find someone else--”

“No.” Colonel Phillips’s tone is as hard and expressionless as his face. “We don’t have that kind of time. We have to move. And we need him to do it.” He lifts up a heavy, callused hand and rests it on her shoulder for just a fraction of a moment. He pulls away before it can really settle, putting his hands behind his back. “If I could give him time, I would.” With that, he disappears down the hall.

She nods slowly, although he’s no longer in the room to see it, and steps away, locking up the codes in her desk drawer. She has an idea of where she’ll find Steve.

 

* * *

 

There’s a room at the end of the hall at headquarters that no one seems to quite know what to do with. Mostly, it’s stacked with the odds and ends that don’t quite fit anywhere else. But at some point, someone has dragged in a heavy, ancient punching bag and some equally ancient mats. Peggy doesn’t know whether to thank them or fight them.

Steve Rogers has his back to the door, and the back of his shirt is soaked with sweat.  _ How long has he been down here? _  His body moves like a machine-- brutal, unfeeling, repetitive. His fists hit the bag over and over, with barely a pause for breath.

This is not the Steve she knows. Will the war burn all of that man away too, before it’s all over?

Her voice comes out sharper than she means to over the rhythm of the bag. “Rogers.”

He stops at once, breathing hard. He turns towards her, but he doesn’t look at her. His attention is on the tape unraveling on his fists as he tries to adjust them. “Do you need something?”

She pauses for a moment, carefully considering her options before deciding, as usual, to improvise. She steps carefully out of her heels and onto the mats. “Have you been practicing?”

He stares at her, his face schooled into almost perfect stoicism. “What?”

“Practicing what I taught you.” The early mornings on the base seem like another lifetime ago-- pre-dawn hours in the yard teaching a man smaller than she was but just as determined. He fought like he was ten feet taller than the rest of them. She admired that. It was stupid, it was going to get him killed, but she admired it all the same. 

“In the field,” he says, still refusing to meet her eyes.

“That’s not practicing,” she says with a soft sigh. He starts to turn away from her, back to the bag, and that’s when she decides to take what she’ll call, if asked, a calculated risk. 

She lands a punch on his shoulder-- a clumsy move, tactically, and using barely a quarter of her power, but it gets his attention. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I told you. You need practice,” she says, winding up for another hit. She practically telegraphs the move to him, and he’s able to catch her fist in his to block it. But that’s just another opportunity for Peggy. She brings her other hand up to his wrist and drops low, using his own bulk against him. He goes down like a tree, and she barely manages to clear the impact in time to scramble on top of him. 

He’s still breathing hard, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. “Rogers? You all right?”

He starts to nod, but stops, instead shaking his head. It’s a barely detectable movement, the kind only the trained observer would notice. Peggy moves back, taking hold of Steve’s hands-- gentle this time, but still firm. She undoes the tape around his fists, discarding it on the mat and carefully stroking his thumb over the back of his hand in gentle circles. “Oh, darling,” she murmurs before she can catch herself.  She presses her forehead against his, breathing in the smell of sweat and leather and this dusty, shut-up room. After a few deep breaths, something in Steve uncoils, slowly, like it’s been wound tight for days. It’s as if his strings have been cut. Peggy finds herself holding that weight. 

“Steve…”

“I just want to go home,” he whispers, in a hoarse, flat whisper.

“You’ll go home, I promise,” Peggy says. It’s dangerous to say such things in a war, but she’s determined to make the promise real. “You’ll go home, we’ll go back to Brooklyn, you can show me all those other alleyways you got beat up in…”

He lets out a soft huff of air, almost like a laugh. “I’m not sure we have that kind of time.”

“We’ll have all the time in the world after this,” she murmurs, pressing a gentle kiss to Steve’s forehead. Another dangerous thing to say. But Peggy has always had a reckless heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tumblr user circa 2010 voice* this is a peggy carter appreciation blog/life
> 
> recommended listening for this chapter: "laughter lines" by bastille


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am a bottomless well of Natasha Romanov emotions, who knew

Natasha declines to join the team watching Rogers. By the time Fury makes the offer, they’ve already fought together in New York. It feels more like some kind of obscure test than a genuine offer. In this line of work, you don’t get offers. You get orders. “He’s smarter than you think he is. It’d never fly.”

 

Fury doesn’t look up from the screens across his desk. “You know that he’s not going to be your friend, right?”

 

Natasha is a professional. She doesn’t roll her eyes. At least, not until she’s on the elevator on the way down. She doesn’t expect to be friends. She’s beginning to suspect that that’s not how that sort of thing works.

 

She’s not involved in the surveillance.

 

But she watches. She doesn’t know how not to. It’s something she made her peace with a long time ago.

 

* * *

 

A series of observations, dutifully recorded and filed away for future reference.

  1. He takes his coffee with exactly one sugar packet and an absurd amount of creamer.
  2. He’ll eat whatever you put in front of him with polite determination, but he has a special fondness for pad thai and the gyros from the food truck that shows up on random Thursdays.
  3. He’s not nearly as incompetent with tech as they expect him to be. He lets them believe that, even when it clearly grates on his nerve. Rogers is playing a long game. She respects that.
  4. He comes into the building in the morning in running gear.
  5. He may in fact be the loneliest person she’s ever met.



 

* * *

 

_“Oooh, that’s fun. What was your list like for me?”_

 

_She bites back a smile on the phone, tries to turn it into a scowl for the sake of the game. “Oh, you know, the usual: horrible taste in music, can’t make popcorn without burning it, smells like truck stop cologne.”_

 

_“That’s rude. I get my cologne from a perfectly respectable outlet mall out of Hoboken. You’re a terrible spy.”_

 

* * *

 

She expected him to ask for the compass she’s seen in some of the old newsreel footage, with Peggy Carter’s portrait taped to the inside. She was even looking forward to a nice, casual museum heist on her weekend off.

 

The tags are… a more unexpected ask.

 

She’s not a fixer by nature. But she does what she can. Besides, stealing something out of SHIELD’s archives is less impressive than it sounds. At least by her standards.

 

* * *

 

Natasha can hear the tags sometimes, when they’re in the field, or sparring in the gym. Sometimes, when he thinks no one’s looking, he brings a hand up to his chest, tracing fingertips over the faint outlines under the fabric.

 

It’s a gesture that happens much more often after the Winter Soldier’s mask flies off. Natasha has just enough time to think, _so he really is a ghost_ before she has to run for cover.

 

She brings one hand up to cover the little arrow necklace. Clint had picked it up at a roadside stand somewhere, while he was on a mission. The fake diamonds have been glued back in twice, and the finish has started to fall off in chunks. It’s one of the tackiest things she’s ever seen. She wouldn’t take it off for anything.

 

Rogers doesn’t share much. It’s a little sad, how ordinary that feels. But it’s different from the kind of silence she’s used to. It’s not a deliberate attempt to crush what’s inside him and pretend it doesn’t exist. She doesn’t have a lock on what this is. She won’t until a few months later, when she’s in the back of a van with Sam Wilson and the wings she’s just stolen for him.

 

_“He doesn’t like to bleed on other people.”_

 

* * *

 

It was easier when James Buchanan Barnes was still a ghost.

 

Steve Rogers is still in a hospital bed when he starts the search all over again. “Heard It Through the Grapevine” is still playing when Natasha walks in to find him on the hospital phone, in the middle of a heated discussion with some other hospital. “I understand that you can’t tell me anything else, but I just… I need to know if you’ve seen any patients fitting that description, any time in the past 24 hours-- I understand, I just--”

 

He lets out a frustrated groan as Natasha looks at him. “She hung up on me.”

 

Sam Wilson is still in the chair at his bedside, face propped up on his hands, a weary expression indicating that he lost this argument some time ago. “Yeah. They tend to do that when some rando calls asking for confidential patient information.”

 

“You should get some rest, Rogers.”

 

“I haven’t been doing anything but rest in this hospital,” Steve mutters, hanging the phone up. He moves to sit up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

 

Sam lifts a hand, stopping him. “Whoa, whoa, no, you weren’t resting, you were unconscious. Doesn’t count. You need to actually lay back, close your eyes, and count sheep, or whatever the hell it is you people do.”

 

Natasha hands Sam one of the coffees in her hand. “Take a break. Go grab a shower or something, I’ve got this.”

 

“Yeah. You deal with his stubborn ass,” Sam mutters, rubbing a hand over his face. He takes a long sip of his coffee and retreats down the hallway.

 

“So. You’re cold-calling the hospitals already, huh?”

 

“The helicarrier crashed. He could be hurt. Someone might have seen him…”

 

“He wouldn’t go to a hospital. HYDRA conditioning probably would have had him look for one of their bases or safe houses.”

 

Steve looks up at her as if the wind has been knocked out of him. Natasha is instantly  aware that she’s said the wrong thing. It’s one of the missteps she still makes sometimes, where she drops hard facts into conversations that call for softer skills.

 

“Look, I agree. We need to find Barnes before someone else does. But you’re in no shape to do this right now.”

 

“My ribs are healed, I’m _fine,_ I’m ready--”

 

“Sure, your ribs have healed. Maybe. But you’ve also had about six hours of sleep in the past 48, you haven’t eaten anything but coffee and half a pretzel from the mall, and you smell like the Potomac. You’re not ready to go find a lost dog, let alone the-- him.”

 

Steve stares at her for a moment, then slowly, carefully eases himself to the bed. It appears his ribs aren’t nearly as healed as he was trying to let on. His body practically sags onto the bed, the exhaustion weighing heavily on every bone in his body. His eyes close, but he doesn’t sleep.

 

Instead, he talks.

 

“Bucky and I found our neighbor’s cat once. She ran out one spring, when Mrs. Foster left the door open a little too long. She was a wreck, crying and carrying on, so… we looked for her. For days. It was cold and rainy, I wanted to go home, but Bucky… Bucky wouldn’t give up. We were six blocks from home when we finally found her in an alley. She was soaking wet and shivering, and the ribbon Mrs. Foster always tied around her neck was ruined. Bucky lifted one from the corner store on the way home.”

 

Natasha lowers herself carefully into the chair, nodding along as though Steve can see her.

 

“She was so happy she cried. She even kissed Bucky, he was so embarrassed… I wouldn’t let him live it down for weeks…”

 

His voice trails off, and Natasha thinks he might have finally fallen asleep. “Everyone thought I was the stubborn one, but he… he’s the one who never gives up.”

 

“Yeah, well, you’re still tenacious yourself. We’ll find him, Steve.” His first name feels strange in her mouth, but not wrong. He doesn’t seem upset by it, at least. He nods, something almost like a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Can you turn the music back on?”

 

Once she’s sure that Steve is really asleep, she slips out of the room. She has some leads to follow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this a plot  
>  \-- me, 3k words deep in character feelings meandering


	5. Chapter 5

It takes Natasha over a month to find out about the other Smithsonian theft. Her contact doesn’t call it that, of course, no matter how she pushes, but that’s what it is.

 

When she accesses the security footage, she finds exactly what she expects to-- Barnes, clumsily disguised in stolen clothes and motorcycle gloves, wandering through the gallery like a ghost. She sees his shoulders heave as he stares through the early life display, then turn away, looking for an exit. A way out of this. 

 

The cameras lose him until he shows up in the archive, and something changes in him as he goes through the objects on the table. The camera quality is even lower back here, with only one angle available, and she can’t distinguish which of the pieces of paper he takes. 

 

“What was taken?”

 

“One of the objects from the Brooklyn years--”

 

“You said that. Which one?”

 

“... a photograph.”

 

Natasha bites back an exasperated sigh. “What photograph?”

 

“An old family photo, of Captain Rogers and Barnes. When they were children.”

 

Natasha pauses, a pen held up to her mouth. That’s… interesting. She would have expected one of the photos from the war, something where he and Steve looked closer to their present day selves. Not something so far in the past. 

 

Maybe he remembers more than they bargained for.

 

* * *

 

 

Sam should know better than to answer calls from restricted numbers. It’s not that he doesn’t know who it is. It’s that he knows  _ exactly  _ who they are.

 

“Natasha, I’m literally about to get on a plane.”

 

“To New York, right? Visiting family?”

 

“... why do you know that? Stop knowing that.”

 

“It’s what I do. I have a job for you.”

 

“I don’t work for you.”

 

“But you’re working Steve’s missing person case.”

 

Sam rubs at his temples. “I’m trying. But the guy’s gone deep underground, I can’t find a trace of him anywhere.” 

 

“Have you tried New York?”

 

“... what do you want?” 

 

“It’s really simple. I just need you to check in with an old friend.”

 

“Who?”  Sam has a sudden, horrifying mental image of a tense, horseradish-infested lunch with some old Russian Mafia enforcer in Brighton Beach.

 

“She works at Metro General. She works nights. There’s a shawarma place just outside. It’s usually where she spends her breaks.”

 

“Wait, who am I meeting--”

 

With that, she hangs up on him. And there’s no point in trying to call back.

 

“There’s a fine line between being mysterious and being an asshole,” he mutters, shutting his phone off as he settles into his airplane seat. 

 

* * *

 

 

_ The city has changed. _

 

The asset can’t trace where the thought comes from or what triggers it. He doesn’t think he’s familiar enough with it to really know. That is what his handlers would have told him once, he thinks. When he had tried to ask questions. He thinks they burned that out of him. Sometimes he brushes up against the scar tissue of where these other parts of him used to be. He recoils from them and focuses instead on the basics of what he needs.

 

The safehouse he knows from procedure is empty, picked over. There’s a faint sense of relief when he notices that even the weapons are gone. 

 

There are no new orders. 

 

Without them, he drifts through streets that he does and doesn’t remember. He keeps waiting for some kind of landmark to loom out of the fog inside his head, but it all remains stubbornly blank and white. When he pulls out the old photograph of those two boys, he can almost see shapes in the fog, hear faint and distorted snatches of conversation.

 

Something is drawing him out to the very edges of the city, towards the ocean, like true north on a compass. It draws him through blocks and blocks of bright cafes and bars, crowded with people laughing and talking together. They don’t notice him, but he pulls his baseball cap further over his eyes, slumps his shoulders. He does everything he can to become more invisible. 

 

He finally stops near the water’s edge, long past the buildings with the bright signs and the patina of money. The building in front of him is old, empty, gutted. Most of the windows are boarded up, and there’s a condemned sign on the door. It’s locked. He could break it down, but that runs the risk of drawing attention, even in a deserted area like this one. Maybe even especially here.

 

Instead, he slips around to the back of the building, easily scaling the chain link fence and scrambling up the fire escape ladders. It’s rusty, groaning under his weight, but it holds. 

 

He remembers someone whispering in his ear, cheap liquor on their breath,  _ Buck, we gotta be quiet, Mr. Larsen hears like a goddamn bat, he’ll tell on us _ . He stops at the fourth floor, at the little window there. It’s cloudy with dust and grime, and it’s far too dark to see inside, but he can feel the first drops of rain through his clothes. 

 

Time to take shelter.

 

He forces the window open with a little difficulty in his current state of confusion and exhaustion. He fumbles in his backpack for the flashlight he keeps there, shining it around the room. It’s tiny and dirty, empty of furniture, holes in the walls. There are deep scars in the floorboards, and he traces his fingers along them for a moment, trying to formulate a story to go with them. He can’t come up with any. 

 

He paces the perimeter of the room, running a hand along the walls and the baseboards, checking for traps. There’s nothing. It’s empty, completely forgotten. 

 

He spreads out the blankets from his bag and lowers himself carefully to the ground. He opens up his notebook and scribbles down the few fragments he can still hold onto from the day, as he’s taken to doing. Maybe eventually he will get enough to create a story. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have gotten much too deep into this for someone who knows this little about NYC, why did i do this


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how does Claire Temple know Natasha Romanov?
> 
> i'll tell you: 
> 
> ... i don't know.

Sam has been waiting in this shawarma place for two hours. He's been able to determine that while the chicken shawarma is excellent, the fries are only mediocre.

 

The lady behind the counter just sent him another order of fries, along with a pitying smile. 

 

He takes a bite, more to be polite than anything. 

 

It's just after midnight when a woman walks through the door. She's dressed in pale blue scrubs, her dark hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. The lady behind the counter already has her food ready on a tray-- apparently this is kind of a standing arrangement.

 

Sam stands up and walks over to her tablet, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Are you Claire Temple?”

 

She looks up from her food, giving him a cursory glance. “Who's asking?”

 

“I'm a friend of Natasha Romanov.”

 

At that, he sees her hand subtly move over to cover the pepper spray on her keys. Which, given the overall Natasha Romanov vibe, isn't a totally irrational move. “My name is Sam Wilson. I'm working in kind of a… missing persons case?”

 

“And what does that have to do with me?”

 

“Natasha says you're kind of the local expert on… weird shit.” That's a piece of context he'd only managed to glean by relentlessly texting Barton over the past day and a half, but it helps.

 

She stares at him, one eyebrow arched up. 

 

“I mean like,” he drops his voice low, making sure the only employee in this place isn't listening, “superhuman type stuff.”

 

She continues to stare at him. He sighs heavily and drags a hand over his face. “Look, have you seen a guy with a metal arm? Or like… half a metal arm? Some portion of a metal arm?”

 

She shakes her head, taking another bite of her sandwich. “Nope. Haven't seen any cyborgs.”

 

“Heard about any? Any weird rumors out of anywhere? Especially Brooklyn?”

 

“This is New York. There's nothing but rumors.”

 

Sam sighs heavily. He's officially accomplished absolutely nothing but being yet another weirdo in Claire Temple’s day. Or night, he guesses. “Well, can you let me know if you do? I have a card--”

 

“Why?”

 

“What?”

 

“Why are you looking for this guy?”

 

Sam pauses for a second, not quite sure how to explain this. How much of this is he allowed to give away?

 

“He's a friend of a friend. He just got out of… kind of a bad situation. We're trying to help him out, but he disappeared.”

 

“This bad situation have anything to do with the helicarrier crashing in the Potomac?”

 

Sam just stares at her, frozen in the middle of fumbling for one of the business cards he's hastily scratched out his work email on and scribbled his cell number on.

 

“We get CNN outside DC, you know. You look different without goggles on, but not that different.”

 

Secret identities are bullshit anyway. He just sets the card down on her table. “If you see or hear anything, give me a call? It’s really important.”

 

“Right. Will do.” She tucks the card in the pocket of her scrubs and gathers her trash. With that, she turns and walks out the door, towards the hospital. 

 

Sam sighs heavily and goes back to his table, picking up his little cardboard container of mostly cold, mediocre fries to eat on the subway ride back to his parents’ home.

 

He texts Barton. That tends to be the most direct route to contacting Natasha.

 

_ tell Romanov that I bothered some nurse on her only break and found out nothing, so thanks. _

 

Barton responds at 4 am with a shrug emoji.

 

* * *

 

 

The memories come back faster in this city. They're still fragmented and strange, but there are so many more. 

 

Sometimes, they come too fast. He can't write fast enough to pin them down, can't find the right words to match the images. His notebook pages turn from scribbled words to faintly smeared sketches of city streets, hands cupped around oranges, a chipped coffee mug.

 

The sketches won't last in that cheap notebook. Eventually, they’ll be smeared into a flat gray mass. No good to him then, if they--

 

_ come back for him, make him that monster again, make him finish his mission _

 

\-- if he loses the memories again. 

 

He looks at the blank walls around him and an idea sparks, and finally catches. He's been doing his clumsy best to patch the holes, and it almost looks whole.

 

One of the stores a few blocks away has bottles of paint on the shelves. Red, yellow, blue, and black. He has the bottle in his hand, watching to make sure the store owner doesn't return before he tucks it in his backpack.

 

_ They can't be older than eleven when they're standing in front of the corner store across from the apartment. Steve’s jaw is set, shoulders back. He's got that proud, stubborn look on his face, the one that means Bucky has no chance of winning. _

 

_ “Steve, come on, you don't have to-- I'm the one that took it, you don't have to--” _

 

_ “You took it for me. I'm payin’ em back.” _

 

_ Bucky can feel the burn of shame creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks, both for the theft of the sketchbook and the other, hidden thing. The one he doesn't know how to put into words.  _

 

_ “Steve, don't…” _

 

_ He walks into the store, the bell ringing behind him. Bucky follows after him, hanging at the front of the door. He watches Steve go up to the counter and hand over three pennies, almost a week of odd jobs around the block gone.  _

 

_ The walk back home is quiet, neither of them looking at each other. Bucky keeps opening his mouth and closing it as he feels all the words forming wrong.  _

 

_ He comes to a stop, his hands up in his hair. Steve stops immediately, turning back and breaking the silence. “Bucky?” _

 

_ “I just. I just wanted you to have something nice for your birthday. That's all.” _

 

_ “I know. Just… don't steal for me. It's not right.” _

 

_ Bucky nods slowly, meeting Steve’s eyes. _

 

_ If he doesn't say it out loud, it's not really like breaking a promise. _

 

He stops and slowly puts the bottle back on the shelf, walking out of the store. 

 

Maybe he can start keeping that promise now. Somehow.

 

* * *

 

 

The old man at the grocery store half a block away gives him cash for helping unload the truck in the early mornings. He’s awake then anyway, and it helps keep him fed.

 

There's just enough left over to go back for that bottle of paint and a cheap brush. 

 

He squeezes out the paint into an old paper cup and starts laying down the outlines of that shop counter, that determined little boy handing over three pennies to the old woman behind the counter, the sketchbook he's already half filled tucked under his arm. 

 

The other boy he paints much smaller, shoulders slumped, eyes down, hands shoved in his pockets like he can't trust himself not to take something else. He was already almost a head taller than Steve at that age, but in that moment, he felt smaller, low as dirt. 

 

He thinks that might have been the moment when he knew he would never be good enough. 

 

It's almost dark by the time he finishes, breathing as hard as if he's just run a mile. He settles back on the floor, staring up at the painting. 

 

It feels like his.

 

He isn't Bucky anymore. He's not sure he can be.

 

But the name settles in his head more easily than “the asset.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> truly, the saddest thing in this chapter is Sam Wilson's mediocre fry experience, like this if u cry everytim
> 
> please stick with me through the WILDLY self-indulgent idea of Bucky Barnes going full-Rapunzel on the walls of his condemned 1930s apartment, thank you, lovelies!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh no! late update! ahhhhhhh! :( 
> 
> (i'll make up for it with extra chapters, okay)

Claire Temple tucks Sam Wilson’s business card into the junk drawer of her kitchen cabinet and forgets about it. Well, almost. She has other shit on her mind-- Matt Murdock is always up to stupid shit, and Jessica Jones keeps trying to sneak into the hospital with all the subtlety of a brick to the face, Luke Cage finds  ways to get hurt despite being supposedly indestructible…

 

She’s a busy woman, is the point. Wilson’s cyborg isn’t her top priority at the moment.

 

But she’s never exactly had to go looking for the weird stuff. 

 

She’s walking towards the Red Hook subway station, through summer air as hot and damp as a dog’s breath. Everything feels faintly sticky, and she’s daydreaming about getting home to her air conditioned apartment and ignoring the rest of the world. 

 

The rest of the world has other plans. 

 

She’s just passed some abandoned building when she hears a crash. It wouldn’t even have registered with her, really, if it weren’t for the low, pained groan that followed. Her fingers go to the pepper spray on her keys as she goes to walk into the alley between the buildings, following the sound. “Hello? You okay?”

 

The person in the alley is crumpled at the bottom of the fire escape, trying to get up again, with limited success. They’re mumbling something to themselves that Claire can’t hear. 

 

“Did you fall?” she asks, glancing up at the fire escape. It’s old and rusted, and it doesn’t look particularly safe. As she approaches, the person starts to stumble away, but winds up just leaning against the wall, head tilted up, breathing fast and shallow. For the first time, she gets a good look at the man-- long dirty hair, pulled back into a loose bun, wearing layers of clothing too hot for the weather, tall, but with slumped shoulders, as if he wants to shrink and disappear. 

 

“Are you okay?” 

 

“Just… just need some air,” he mutters, one hand covering his eyes. 

 

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” she says, stepping closer. His skin is red and flushed, but it isn’t shining with sweat, like everyone else in this city. This isn’t a good sign. She’s got a feeling that she’s gonna be calling an ambulance before all this is over. “That was a hell of a fall, you know?” 

She’s almost at his side when he glances over at her and his eyes go wide. “No, no… you should… you should stay away. ‘S not safe.” 

 

“I’m not gonna hurt you. My name is Claire, I’m a nurse. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

 

He takes a step back, both of his hands up to keep her at a distance. 

 

Even in the shadows of the alley, the metal of his left hand catches the light. And all thoughts of calling an ambulance just evaporate. Instead, she eases the man into a sitting position, offering him the water bottle in her bag as she calls a cab. He doesn’t drink, just holds it in his hands as he stares through her, eyes weary and unfocused.

 

She tries to keep him engaged and present, asking him questions in a low voice as they ride to her apartment. None of the answers make much sense. 

 

“What’s your name?”

 

He pauses a long time before answering, brow furrowed like he’s worried the answer will be wrong. “Bucky.” 

 

“Okay. Good to meet you, Bucky.”

 

“You shouldn’t have done that. It’s… it’s not safe.”

 

“You’re gonna be fine. Besides, if I left you, you would have melted into the sidewalk.”

 

He opens his mouth to say something else, but closes it again, his jaw clenched. She winds up having to support him during the long elevator ride to her apartment. She steers him to her couch and cranks the AC to its highest setting. “Hey. You need to take that jacket off.”

 

He doesn’t even look at her as he starts to slowly, clumsily remove the heavy jacket and the hoodie underneath it. She runs to the bathroom and starts to fill the tub with cold water, checks the medical supplies in her bedroom for the fluids she’ll probably need to treat his dehydration, and then runs back to the kitchen, digging in the drawer until she finds Sam’s card. She shoves it in her pocket and returns to the living room, guiding Bucky into the bathroom. He’s stripped down to a pair of boxers and a t-shirt when she stops him.  “Okay, come on, let’s get you cooled off.”

 

He’s… compliant. Weirdly compliant, honestly, even as she gets him settled in the cold water. The water slowly starts to turn a sooty grey-brown. He’s evidently been living rough for a while. “You doing okay?” 

 

He just stares up at her and shrugs. 

 

“I’m gonna step out for a second, okay? Yell if you need me.”

 

There’s no response as she steps out into the hall, so she leaves the door half open as she dials Sam’s number.

 

“Sam Wilson speaking.”

 

“I think I found your cyborg.” Working with New York’s weirdos has kind of burned out all Claire’s politeness. 

 

“Where’d you see him? I-- we’ll have some people there, if you just give us a general location--”

 

“At my apartment.”

 

“... oh shit.”

 

“He was sick, I figured one of you guys probably didn’t want anything to do with hospitals--”

 

“Look, I don’t wanna scare you, but you should get out of there.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“So, that bad situation I mentioned?”

 

“The one with the helicarrier crashing?”

 

“He’s kind of… why that happened.”

 

“I’m not following.”

 

“You ever seen  _ The Manchurian Candidate? _ ”

 

Claire closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose, inhaling sharply. “Is this really the time to talk about movies?”

 

There’s an awkward silence on the line. “He was kind of… brainwashed. And made to kill people. For years.”

 

“And you didn’t tell me this before because…?”

 

“I didn’t want to freak you out, and I didn’t think you’d actually  _ find  _ the guy--”

 

Sometimes, it’s really hard not to scream out loud. “What can I say, I’m a smart lady. Who are you sending?”

 

There’s another long silence, and she hears two faint chimes. “Uh. Me. And… Romanov.”

 

“Great. Now it’s a party.” She hangs up and takes a moment to breathe deeply, her hands clasped in front of her. She pokes her head into the bathroom, where Bucky is still sitting in the cold and dirty water, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast.

 

Even with the metal arm fully revealed, he doesn’t seem dangerous to her.

 

But then again, Sam’s seen him in a different life than she has.

 

She goes across the hall to her room and grabs a thermometer and the pair of sweats and a t-shirt that someone had left at her apartment the last time they showed up at two in the morning for stitches. They may not be an exact fit, but at least they’re clean. 

 

She sets them on the sink and looks over to Bucky again. “You doing okay?”

 

“Sarah was a nurse.”

 

“Who’s Sarah?”

 

“Steve’s mom. She patched us both up when we were kids. I think that’s… where I got this scar from,” he says, gesturing vaguely at his face. 

 

“Well, I’ll do my best to get you patched up. No stitches this time, so that’s a plus, right?”

 

“Steve wasn’t the one who started the fights. But he didn’t… he didn’t know when to run away. Or he did, but he wouldn’t. Not for anything.”

 

Claire stays quiet, watching him as he tilts his head back, closing his eyes as he rests his head against the cool tiles. 

 

“He’s still fighting.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is setting up the rest of the plot-- there's an actual plot with an OUTLINE now, how wild is that? 
> 
> anyway, enjoy, exciting things are coming!

Claire has just gotten Bucky out of the tub and dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt when someone starts knocking on her door. Her initial reaction is to ignore it-- it’s way too early for Sam and Natasha to be here. Instead, she steers Bucky  to the couch in her living room and pushes a bottle of water into his hand. He hasn’t been very responsive at all, even after getting him out of the tub. His answers have been nods, yes or no monotones, anything he can do without raising his voice very much. 

 

The knocking has escalated into full on pounding. Apparently, they’re not going to go away. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she mutters under her breath. She goes over to the peephole. There’s a woman there, dressed in a sleek blue suit that practically reeks of money, blonde hair and expensive designer sunglasses. 

 

“I think you have the wrong apartment,” Claire calls through the door. 

 

The woman removes her sunglasses, staring at Claire as if she can see her through the door somehow. And Claire would know those eyes and that smirk anywhere. “Heard you ran into an old friend of mine.”

 

“Oh for  _ fuck’s  _ sake,” Claire says again, rolling her eyes. She unlocks her door and waves her into the apartment. “Come on.” 

 

Natasha Romanov steps into the apartment like she owns the place. That’s how she goes anywhere. It’s a little obnoxious, honestly. She kicks off her stiletto heels and abandons them by the door, then removes her blonde wig to reveal a curly red pixie cut. “How is he?”

 

“Uh, he has one of the worst cases of heat stroke I’ve ever seen in my life. And I don’t know where he’s been living, but my best guess would be… a Dumpster? He was talking for a bit while he was cooling off, but after that, he shut down.”

 

Natasha nods, taking in the information. She walks over to him, and-- starts talking in Russian.

The man immediately straightens up, his shoulders back, hands at his side, looking up at her. Almost like he’s at attention.

 

“Okay, sure,” Claire mutters, going back to her bedroom to haul out her kit. When she comes back, Natasha is pulling out her phone and snapping photos of the arm before she goes and starts examining the mechanical arm. “What are you doing?”

 

“Preparing for next steps. I’ll get out of your way.”

 

Claire just stares at her before pulling out her stethoscope. If Bucky was quiet before, he’s practically catatonic now. He stares ahead vacantly, without any expression or interest, absolutely still except for the steady, metronomic rhythm of his breathing. That stillness sets off one of the many alarms in Claire’s brain. Those words did something to him.

 

“What did you do? He wasn’t like this.”

 

Natasha is busy on her phone, too intent on whatever she’s doing to look up. “It’s temporary, just a precautionary measure--”

 

“Not an answer to my question.”

 

“Wilson told you who he is, right?”

 

“As much as any of you ever tell me anything. Is this the part where you fill me in?”

 

She’s not looking at her, but Claire can hear the amused smirk in her voice anyway. “He was a killing machine. One of the best in the business. It wasn’t his choice. He was being controlled. Sort of like  _ The Manchurian Candidate _ \--”

 

“I’ve never seen that movie, and now I’m not going to.”

 

“It’s a useful reference point for a lot of people.”

 

“You said he was an old friend. What, did you work with him?”

 

“He shot me once, to get to his target.” She says it so casually, like she might have mentioned going to the same college or growing up on the same block, like surviving potentially fatal wounds is a perfectly normal way to meet people. Claire wonders, as she has at least twice a week for the past two years, what it’s like to know normal people. 

 

“Right. Of course. And the reason you hypnotized him is…?”

 

“Killing wasn’t his choice. His handlers had to control him somehow. The conditioning isn’t a pretty process. And when those controls start to fall away… it can get ugly.”

 

“He was fine before you got here.”

 

“And I’ll keep it that way. How’s he doing?”

 

“Normal vitals, all things considered. Still dehydrated, but I guess I’ll just start an IV. Since you turned him into a mannequin.” 

 

“That’s probably best. Was he lucid?”

 

“He kept talking about someone named Steve and telling me to get away.”

 

Natasha is quiet for a moment. “I see.”

 

“I’m glad someone does, because I don’t,” Claire says, straightening up as she finishes connecting the IV. Natasha is staring thoughtfully at Bucky, her head tilted. Claire can practically hear the gears clicking and whirring in her brain, probably making the kinds of calculations that would never occur to Claire. 

Someone knocks politely on her door. She goes to the peephole and is relieved to see that at least this person isn’t wearing a disguise. Sam Wilson is standing there, looking exhausted but attentive. She lets him in, waving him into her apartment.

 

“Hey, sorry, I had to catch a flight… Romanov says she’ll be here in an hour--”

 

“Hey, Wilson,” Natashas calls from the couch, waving at him. 

 

“What the fuck… you were already here?”

 

“I was in the area.”

 

“You told me you were out of the country! That’s why I had to hurry!”

 

“Technically, I was. But I’m here now. This is our priority now.”

 

Sam drops his duffel bag to the ground and lets out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. Fine. So what’s our plan now, before his murder mode kicks in?”

 

“That shouldn’t be a problem for a while.”

 

“Okay so… what’s the plan? He can’t stay in my apartment forever.”

 

“I’ve been working on that. I have a contact.”

 

“Who?”

 

Natasha picks up her vibrating phone, voice sunny and sweet. “Hey, what’s up? No, no, I’ve been great-- you watched the hearings? We’ll have to meet up sometime to talk about it… but first, I need a favor…” With that, she gets up and walks over to the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

 

Sam and Claire sit in silence, unsure whether to stare at each other or at the still silent Bucky.

 

“So. I take it she’s annoyingly cryptic with everyone, then?”

 

Sam sighs heavily, leaning back against the doorframe. “They all are. The only one who isn’t is Tony, and half the shit he says is nonsense anyway.” 

 

“Great. Great.”

 

“So… how’s he been,” Sam asks, tilting his head towards Bucky. 

 

“Pretty shitty, but could have been worse. Sort of the baseline for you guys.” 

 

“Uh, great.”

 

“Not really. He could have died.”

 

Sam flashes her an awkward grin. “Well, I mean… that’s sort of standard. Like you said.”

 

Claire rolls her eyes, but she still manages half a smile. He seems fairly normal, despite the people he apparently hangs out with. It’s honestly a little refreshing.  

 

Natasha emerges from the bathroom, her phone in her hand. “Pepper is sending a car. It’ll be here in ten minutes.” 

 

“A car to where?”

 

“The Tower. It’s our best option. Stark’s built some rooms that are designed to take the Hulk, and Pepper managed to bully him into adding a real medical facility.”

 

“Does it have real medical staff?”

 

Sam and Natasha stare at each other for a moment before Natasha finally shakes her head. “Not yet.”

 

Claire  doesn’t say a word before going to her closet to grab her perpetually packed overnight bag. “Okay. I’ll go. On a temporary basis.” 

 

“Thank you, Claire.”

 

“Don’t mention it.”

 

When Natasha’s phone goes off again, she places a gentle hand on Bucky’s shoulder and speaks to him in Russian, standing him up so she can pull a hoodie on him. She keeps one hand on his shoulder and another at the small of his back as she guides him down the stairs. She murmurs to him occasionally in Russian, but the tone of her voice feels more like some kind of comforting gesture than a command. 

 

Sam and Claire follow her out to the sleek, black, expensive car waiting for them on the street. He waits until they’re gotten in and shut the door behind them to mouth “ _ Pepper? _ ” at her.

 

She doesn’t quite manage to stifle her laugh at that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's a ficlet in the works about how Claire met Natasha. get excited. or don't, whatever you like.

**Author's Note:**

> there is, in fact, more fic in this vein to follow, as i am not so much a person as i am a perpetual angst machine.


End file.
